By now we’ve heard that just a couple of weeks ago several high profile celebrities’ personal nude photographs were hacked and posted for public consumption. The celebrities themselves are outraged, as is a great dealt of the American public. Since then lawsuits have been threatened and Google claims to have gone to great lengths to have had the links to the photos removed. One of the most high profile of these celebrities finally broke her silence and spoke publicly in an interview that is available in Vanity Fair. Jennifer Lawrence has gone on to explain that regardless of her very public role as an actress that “It does not mean that it comes with the territory. It's my body, and it should be my choice, and the fact that it is not my choice is absolutely disgusting. I can't believe that we even live in that kind of world. "

Recently Avast exposed a troubling trend which has called in to question the growing practice of many Americans reselling their smartphones. While most Americans feel that they have adequately wiped their device clean of any type of personal information before offering it up for resale on popular sites like eBay and Amazon, Avast discovered, after purchasing 20 Android phones from eBay, that these phones still contained a troubling amount of private information - such as personal photographs, search records, text messages, emails, contact information and even a completed loan application.

Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled in a very important way that has strong implications for the employee/employer relationship. In the increasingly mobile world that we live in today this was an enormous victory for privacy. The Supreme Court held that the information and data contained on cellphones, an everyday extension of most people’s personalities, should not be subjected to warrantless searches. Specifically, the court said that for criminals who are arrested their cellphones and the information they contain, can’t be searched without a warrant. But it is understood that the ruling itself will have a far broader reach in to the debate on privacy and the relationship between tablets, desktops and those who use them.

Employers and employees have embraced the BYOD trend across a variety of industries as a way to accommodate welcomed changes to traditional employment models. The same is true of what has been one of the most traditional work models – medicine. In the last several years a new trend is emerging in healthcare. Fueled by changes in the professional landscape of medicine, as well as their own personal interests and desires, doctors are moving from the more traditional structure of private practice to one where they are an effective part of larger provider organizations.

In the age of mobility we are constantly craving new ways to support the architecture of our lives. We are looking for ways to seamlessly automate all of the nuances of our day and our phones and tablets have become the most salient way to do so.

On a daily basis we inherently compartmentalize our informational assets, balancing security with accessibility. We keep our passwords and sensitive documents in a secure place, maybe even physically in a safe or a bank. We keep our kids’ toys, on the other hand, much more accessible since the risk associated with their loss is not worth the burden of strict security measures...

Today’s students are more connected via mobile devices than ever before. According to a recent Pew Research Center study, 78% of teens have a cell phone, and nearly half of those teens own smartphones. College students on average own 7 different devices, with a laptop and smartphone topping the list. Smart devices are capable of more than just providing students with ubiquitous connectivity. They are able to provide controls, which can align more than ever, the student, institutions, government and business. A recent blog post by Peggy Johnson, Executive Vice President Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., helps you imagine the future of education by showing that you can separate out device use scenarios that are directly related to making educational gains, as opposed to other scenarios. This is where the multi-persona magic happens, and new alignment is achieved...

Last week we saw how Cellrox’s multi-persona BYOD strategy allows the enterprise to effectively attract top talent. In our final installment of this MWC Blog series, we will see how Cellrox meets the business challenges of rapidly changing models of employment in the enterprise. According to Intuit, the percentage of occasional, temporary or part time jobs in the US economy will grow from 30% to 40% by 2020. In some industries this type of employment will make up the majority of jobs. The trends of moving from full-time employment to part-time, occasional, project/task-based, or a freelancer- type of employment, is fueled by the following undercurrents...

Last week we looked at how Cellrox’s multi-persona strategy increases compliance in highly regulated industries, such as financial services, because the practicality of the strategy addresses the way in which employees actually work. To meet the business challenges of today and tomorrow Cellrox’s multi-persona BYOD strategy also enables the enterprise to attract and retain top talent. Talent is a critical factor in the success or failure of a business. In some knowledge intensive industries, such as professional services, the knowledge worker is a key competitive resource, and talent is what is delivered to clients. Similarly, in industries that require a great degree of creativity, such as advertising, it is of the utmost importance to be able to recruit the best minds from industry and straight out of school. Winning the war on talent is crucial for winning business and differentiating in the marketplace...

Last week we highlighted the significant advantages adopting a multi-persona strategy has on the ability for the enterprise to successfully implement a BYOD strategy. It is clear that specific trends in business would be supported by this strategy and allow a variety of enterprises to rise to meet the business challenges of tomorrow. This is especially true for highly regulated industries, such as financial services. Currently, the standard for the majority in this industry is to have an employee carry two separate smartphones, one for their professional use and the other for personal, with the expectation that these two arenas will never overlap...

Architecture is the translation of strategy or business intent. To be successful with a BYOD strategy, the solution design needs to optimize for a strong separation between the personal and professional on the same device. A recent KNOX story showcases a design that aims for protecting the device as a whole, with insufficient granularity to enforce sufficient isolation within the device. This design may fall short on delivering a successful BYOD strategy for enterprises. Recently, security researchers at Ben Gurion University (BGU) reported a vulnerability in Android and KNOX that allows a malicious application residing in the user area to capture and expose all communications from the phone, including the secure container, putting all non-encrypted traffic at risk...

As part of MWC 2014, Feb 24 – 28 in Barcelona, Cellrox will convey how Android consumer momentum will be carried in to the enterprise market. This is a preview to a three part series that will discuss how the Cellrox multi-persona strategy ensures BYOD success. In the next few weeks we will explore the direct business benefits to the enterprise of using a multi-persona strategy as well as outline how trends in business can be supported by this strategy. We will focus on compliance, attracting talent and changing models of employment...

At Cybertech 2014 Cellrox will present their vision for a security approach for the BYOD era at the Qualcomm booth. The adoption of mobile devices is pushing information and applications outside of traditional enterprise infrastructure controls. In the case of a BYOD strategy, there is even less control over a device, as it needs to consider the personal habits of the user, and the device itself may not be an enterprise standard. This change in risk pattern requires new effective measures in order to regain control...

Cellrox multi-persona technology is transformational in redefining retail employment strategies. The new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also known as “Obama Care”, requires employers of more than 50 full time employees to extend healthcare coverage to employees working more than 30 hours a week or be subject to penalties. The financial impact on the retail industry is overwhelming and many employers are most likely, at least in part, to look at a different employment model that favors more part time or occasional employees and less full time ones...

In a previous blog post we articulated the keys to a successful BYOD Multi-Persona strategy. It is important to differentiate the strategy by form factor. The design assumptions for a smartphone are based on having a single user in mind. Carrying a smartphone in your pocket, or a wallet, and close to your body, infers the boundaries of who may use the device and also the extent to which a device is personal. In addition, the smartphone form factor tends to discourage scenarios involving increased content consumption and creation. Shifting focus from a smartphone to a tablet form factor brings new considerations into play as the latter enjoys increased device sharing and use scenarios that follow a bigger screen which allows for more consumption, and authoring scenarios...

Citi invited Ranit Fink, co-founder of Cellrox, to talk about Cellrox’s unique technology and how it benefits both the enterprise and the BYOD user. Ranit stressed that the successful BYOD strategy lies in achieving a great user experience while keeping the enterprise safe and illustrated some of the most important elements.

There are billions of mobile phone users all over the world who are taking their phones everywhere they go, including the workplace...

Gartner predicts that within the next few years, half of employers will require employees to use their own device for work and 90 percent of organizations will have data on external IT systems. When looking at the topic of secure and reliable mobile solutions in the increasing BYOD workplace trend, several very important issues need to be addressed. Alongside MDM, many enterprises are using, or thinking about using, containers and application wrappers on users’ smartphones to separate and secure work and private data. This is a crucial issue, in particular, for highly regulated industries such as government and healthcare...

In a recent Forbes article by Tom Kemp, “When Virtualization Meets Mobile,” many challenges and solutions for mobile virtualization are discussed. Whether it is for security, privacy, or just the convenience of carrying only one device, mobile virtualization is certainly becoming a valid option. Still, mobile virtualization faces some challenges to becoming mainstream. The market, as well as the workforce, needs to be aware of such challenges. We believe that a great mobile virtualization solution should...

Last week, in an effort to regain a solid foothold in the technology market, BlackBerry launched the new BB10, the company’s newest Smartphone platform. The launch revealed the platform’s built-in flagship feature called BlackBerry Balance™. The Balance feature provides a complete separation between work and personal use, integrated directly into the existing infrastructure of the phone. In addition, Balance enables a corporate IT or security department, using a remote management module, to erase corporate data if an employee loses his phone or no longer works for the company. BlackBerry Balance marks a new era in Smartphone technology. Blackberry, a company that has dominated the enterprise market for so long, knows better than anyone what IT administrators need when it comes to mobile devices for corporate employees...

Over the past couple years, I have had the opportunity to talk to all sorts of people about keeping work and personal life separate on their mobile phones. I’ve spoken with friends and friends of friends and spouses of friends; all shared the same frustration with the long password enforced on them, even when they just want to use the phone to text their friend or the inability to download and try any application they fancy, because they don’t comply with enterprise policy, some even had stories about camera taken out of their device. And so it happens that they all feel dissatisfied with the solutions provided by their employers and some of them even preferred to hold two devices. But one look at multi-persona application and they are all in agreement...

Realizing the urgent need for Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) as well as additional tele-communication applications, Movius, a global leader in value-added communication services and Cellrox have decided to team up to provide a cross-carrier multiple identity solution called myIdentities.

Perfect timing too, because according to British Telecom’s research report “ReThink the Risk”,, out of more than 2,000 IT decision makers and users across 11 countries, 82% of companies say they already allow BYOD or will do within the next 24 months. Despite its growing popularity, BYOD is associated with complexity and security risks for an organization’s sensitive data and systems, necessitating a smart solution that combines pro-active security and ease of use...